{"id":175464,"date":"2010-01-13T11:01:43","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T16:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/01\/13\/at-hospitals-in-china-caesarean-rate-nears-50\/"},"modified":"2010-01-13T11:01:43","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T16:01:43","slug":"at-hospitals-in-china-caesarean-rate-nears-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/175464","title":{"rendered":"At Hospitals in China, Caesarean Rate Nears 50%"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"China\"Public health officials in the U.S. are worried because nearly a third of births<\/a> here are c-sections, more than twice the rate public officials say would be appropriate. But in China, the rate is far higher: 46%, according to a WHO study published this week in the Lancet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The study looked at data from hospitals in nine Asian countries in 2007 and 2008; China’s rate was highest by far, with Vietnam second, at 36%. The rate for the region as a whole was 27%. <\/p>\n

In each country, researchers looked at deliveries in hospitals in three different regions. To be included, a hospital had to do at least 1,000 deliveries a year, and to do at least some c-sections. Because smaller facilities which may have far lower rates were excluded, the findings may not be representative.<\/p>\n

Still, roughly a quarter of the c-sections done in China and examined in the study weren’t medically necessary, the researchers found. When a Caesarean isn’t medically necessary, a traditional birth is safer, according to this study as well as previous research.<\/p>\n

The study didn’t get into the reasons for the c-section rates. But a commentary<\/a> that accompanied the study called the results “surprising and chilling.” The authors, based at a hospital in Singapore, add that “financial incentives for doing these procedures should be removed or kept to a minimum, and both public and continuing medical education should emphasize the risks of unnecessary caesarean delivery.”<\/p>\n

Image: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n

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Public health officials in the U.S. are worried because nearly a third of births here are c-sections, more than twice the rate public officials say would be appropriate. But in China, the rate is far higher: 46%, according to a WHO study published this week in the Lancet. The study looked at data from hospitals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}